FAIRFIELD -- If Mostafa Abdel Latif had had his way as a kid, he would have spent a lot more time in the swimming pool than on the basketball court. He liked swimming. Being in the pool was fun. Basketball, on the other hand, was not.

"I hated basketball," Abdel Latif, who hails from Alexandria, Egypt, was saying the other day, sitting on a couch in coach Anthony Latina's office at Sacred Heart University. "My mom used to force me to go to practice every day. I hated going to practice. I just liked to swim."

This wasn't competitive swimming or anything like that. Just a typical kid splashing around in the pool with his buddies. He also fooled around a little with soccer, but that experiment didn't last too long.

"I tried soccer but I was terrible at it," he said. "Two left feet. I couldn't control the ball."

The next thing you know, Abdel Latif started to grow up and fill out. And in basketball, size matters.

"When I started getting taller and bigger, I started getting better at basketball," said Abdel Latif, now a 6-foot-8, 260-pound senior at Sacred Heart. "Once I got bigger, the (Egyptian) national team started looking at me, giving me a lot of attention, so I said `basketball it is.'

After helping Egypt win both the 2008 and 2010 African Championships, which qualified the team for the 2009 and 2011 FIBA Under-19 World Championships, Abdel Latif is now in the middle of his second season with the Pioneers. Over the past 10 games, he has shown much of the ability and determination that got him significant minutes with the Egyptian national team en route to an 11th-place finish in 2009 and a 12th-place finish in 2011 at the FIBA championships.

"It was a great experience," Abdel Latif said. "I played against a lot of players that are now playing in the NBA. In fact, I just got an invitation from the (Egyptian) national team to join them this summer for training camp for the World Championships in Spain.

"I definitely have dreams of playing in the 2016 Olympics with the Egyptian team and now that they're looking at me, I can't stop working."

It was that same hard work that finally got Abdel Latif his chance with the Pioneers. After seeing limited action in nine games, Latina took Abdel Latif aside before SHU's game in Las Vegas against UNLV and told the center that he was going to get his chance to show what he could do against the Rebels.

In 26 minutes against UNLV, Abdel Latif had six points and 10 rebounds. The next night in 30 minutes off the bench against Radford, he posted 15 points and 13 rebounds. The next night after that, against Florida A&M, Abdel Latif was in the starting lineup. He's been there ever since.

"He's earned his starting position. He's gives us some rebounding that we have not had probably since Kibwe Trim," Latina said. "I should have played him more early. That was my mistake. I take full responsibility for it. I think that his work ethic as the season's gone on is one of the things I respect most about Mostafa. When things weren't going his way, he worked harder. And that showed me, `Hey, this guy's a winner.'"

"It was tough at the beginning," Abdel Latif said. "I was disappointed but at the same time I was doing everything I could to help the team win, whether it's cheering from the bench or helping them in practice to get better. But as soon as I got my chance, I told coach that I wasn't going to let it go and I'm going to work hard every day."

"He has stepped up," Latina said. "I told him I would not take him out of the game with this level of productivity. His production is through the roof. For him to put a streak together like this, we haven't had something like that since Joey Henley. That's very encouraging."

Knowing that success with Sacred Heart could lead to greater success with the Egyptian national team next summer and beyond, Abdel Latif wants to keep building on his accomplishments.

"I just want to keep doing what I'm doing until the end of the season," said Abdel Latif, who transferred to Sacred Heart from the Arab Academy for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Egypt. "I've talked to a couple of guys, Phil (Gaetano) and Louis (Montes) and Chris (Evans), and we all said the same thing, we're not giving up. We're not giving up because we still can make it to the NEC tournament."

Said Latina: "He's a wonderful kid. He's easy to root for because of his attitude and his work ethic. You want to give chances to kids like him. He's earned it."